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Vaccination: A Conversation Worth Having
While America is still in the grips of swine flu mania, let me use this opportunity to clear up a few things about my beliefs concerning the flu shot, vaccines, and health in general. I do this because there is obviously a lot of curiosity about this subject of vaccines -- it comes up in every interview I do these days, and I've been finding that people, including doctors, are privately expressing a skepticism that is still not very prevalent in public. I feel like I've become a confessor for people who want someone to be raising questions about vaccines.
But I don't want the job. I agree with my critics who say there are far more qualified people than me -- its just that mainstream media rarely interviews doctors and scientists who present an alternative point of view. There is a movement to stop people from asking any questions about vaccines -- they're a miracle, that's it, debate over. I don't think its that simple, and neither do millions of other people. The British Medical Journal from August 25 says half the doctors and medical workers in the U.K. are not taking the flu shot -- are they all crazy too? Sixty-five percent of French people don't want it. Maybe its not as simple as the medical establishment wants to paint it.
Vaccination is a nuanced subject, and I've never said all vaccines in all situations are bad. The point I am representing is: Is getting frequent vaccinations for any and all viruses consequence-free? I feel its unnecessary and counterproductive to try and silence people with condescension. Michael Shermer wrote me an open letter and felt I needed to be told that "vaccinations work by tricking the body's immune system into thinking that it has already had the disease for which the vaccination was given." Thanks, Doc, I thought there might be a little man inside the needle. Yes, I read Microbe Hunters when I was eight, I have a basic idea how vaccines work.
That's not -- or shouldn't be -- where the debate is. I admit, its hard to get as clear a picture of my beliefs, as you could, say, if I had written a book on vaccines, versus someone in the setting of a talk show. So I understand why its easy to take bits of things I have said and extrapolate into something I actually have never said. I understand it, but its not exactly "scientific."
But rather than responding to every absurd thing said, let me just tell you want I do think -- because I will admit, I have gone off half cocked on this issue sometimes, and often only had time on my show to explain a fraction of what needed to be explained, and for that I am sorry. Some of it can't be helped, some of that is the nature of the show we do: live, off the cuff, lots of interruptions. Some of it was just from me being overexcited about finally finding a health regimen that actually made me healthier and feel better. And many a time I have wanted to stop the show and clarify a point or provide the nuance I think it deserves, but I am serving many masters, and you have to get out of the way as much as you can so the guests can say their piece.
But some of it I would do differently. For example, I recently joined Twitter Nation -- what can I say, Demi Moore is a very convincing salesperson -- and what everybody told me about Twitter was that it was supposed to be whatever stray thought or thing just happened to you -- you know, for people who find blogging too formal and stuffy.
But apparently it's taken very seriously, because there was Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes asking the Secretary of Health and Human Services what she thought about the fact that "Bill Maher told his viewers anyone who gets a flu shot is an idiot."
Well, not quite. It was twittered, which I guess doesn't make a huge difference, but as 60 Minutes is the last bastion of TV journalism, accuracy is appreciated. And I see that counts for Twitter, too -- my bad -- so yes, some people are not idiotic to get a flu shot. They're idiotic if they don't investigate the pros and cons of getting a flu shot. But, come on -- it was a twitter from a comedian, not a treatise in the New England Journal of Medicine, that's not what I do.
I'm just trying to represent an under-reported medical point of view in this country, I'm not telling a specific pregnant lady what to do. With unlimited air time, I would have, for example, added to my discussion with Dr. Bill Frist on October 2 that, yes, any flu or health challenge can be dangerous when you're pregnant, and if your immune system is already compromised by, for example, eating a typical American diet, then a flu shot can make sense. But someone needs to be representing the point of view that says the preferred way to handle flus is to have a strong immune system to begin with, and getting lots of vaccines might not be the best way to accomplish that over the long haul.
Now, sometimes its OK to fuck with nature -- I believe "intelligent design" is often anything but intelligent; that "God's perfect universe" is actually full of fuck ups and design flaws, like cleft lips and Down Syndrome -- so correcting nature is sometimes the right thing to do. And then, sometimes its not. For me, the flu shot is in the "not" category.
In addition, my audience is bright, they wouldn't refuse a flu shot because they heard me talk about it, but if they looked into the subject a little more, how is that a bad thing? If they went to the CDC Web site and saw what's in the vaccine -- the formaldehyde, the insect repellent, the mercury -- shouldn't they at least get to have the information for themselves?
But just to reassure all those people who have such a romantic attachment to vaccines: I know, there are vaccines that have had their battles with the bad guys and won -- great! And if you have a compromised immune system and can't boost it naturally, as in poor countries where the children are eating dirt, then a vaccine can be a white knight -- bravo! Does the polio vaccine have the power to prevent children from getting polio, and did it indeed do just that in the 1950s? I believe it does, and it did. But polio had diminished by over 50 percent in the thirty years before the vaccine -- that's a pretty big fact in the polio story that you don't often hear and which merits debate. It may be the case that the vaccine should have been used anyway to finish polio off, but there are some interesting facts on the other side.
So yes, I get it, we learned how to trick our immune systems. And maybe sometimes, you gotta do it. But maybe the immune system doesn't like being tricked so many times. Maybe we should be studying that instead of shouting down debate.
Someone who speaks eloquently about this is Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the National Vaccine Information Center. I find her extremely credible, as I do Dr. Russell Blaylock, Dr. Jay Gordon and many others, but I shouldn't have even mentioned them because I don't want to be "the Vaccine Guy"!! Look it up yourself, and stop asking me about it -- I'm already the Religion Guy, and that's enough work!
Anyway, Ms. Fisher is someone who says she is not "anti-vaccine," but just has a lot of questions about the long term effect of using a lot of vaccines. After devoting her life to studying this, she says that the influenza vaccine studies that have been done "are not persuasive in proving that a seasonal flu shot provides immunity." She also points out "that what we need, but do not yet have, are studies of vaccinated vs unvaccinated children."
Is it worth it to get vaccines for every bug that goes around? Injecting something into my bloodstream? I'd like to reserve that for emergencies. This is the flu, and there's always a flu. I've said it before, America is a panicky country. It's like we look for things to panic about.The reports from Australia, where they're over their flu season, is that its not a terribly virulent flu. The worldwide numbers support that. But you'd never get that impression from the media in this country.
60 Minutes has done two pieces on swine flu within a month. The first one introduced us to a high school football player named Luke Duvall who, we were told, was the picture of health, and then got hit by the flu so bad he was in the hospital at death's door. But later in the segment we learn that Luke had staphylococcus pneumonia along with the flu. Was that staph bug in him when he got hit by the flu? Its not clear from the reporting, but since every other kid on both football teams got the flu, as well as the cheerleaders ... ahem ... and all of them got over it just fine, then it seems quite possible that Luke had a co-existing infection, and that's why his experience with H1N1 was so different.
On the follow up visit a couple of weeks later on 60 Minutes, we were told Luke had "beaten H1N1." No, he beat H1N1 and staph together: that's very different! If 99 percent of people have relatively mild symptoms, shouldn't science's first job be finding out why the one percent get felled? Having an underlying health issue is the point I was raising with Dr. Frist: maybe Luke wasn't the picture of perfect health they described in the opening.
By the way, when Scott Pelley asked the government spokesman about the fact that only one percent of people who get the flu find it to be anything other than a typical, mild flu, the answer was an analogy to seatbelts, that "only 1 percent of people riding in a car will be in an accident, but you don't want to take a chance on being that 1 percent."
That went unchallenged, which is sad, because what a horrible analogy! I would think vaccines containing many different dicey substances shot directly into the bloodstream have a slightly greater chance of secondary effects than a piece of fabric lying across your waist. Maybe if you had to swallow the seatbelt this would be a good analogy.
If one side can say anything and its not challenged, then of course dissent becomes heresy in the minds of many. I don't trust the mainstream media to be thorough or exacting enough to inform me as much as I need on this subject. Sorry, they're just not up to it. At the very least, they should have pointed out, as we watched Luke fighting for life on a ventilator, that, of course, flu vaccines don't have any therapeutic effect on bacterial infection.
While we're on the subject of bacteria, let me say clearly I understand germ theory also -- I believe they also covered that in Microbe Hunters -- nor have I ever said I was a "germ theory denier." What I've been saying is that Western medicine ignores too much the fact that the terrain in which bacteria can thrive is crucial and often controllable, which shouldn't even be controversial. I don't care what Louis Pasteur said on his death bed -- it was probably, "Either the curtains go or I do" -- that's not the point!
And it's precisely because I am a Darwinist that I fear the overuse of antibiotics, since that is what has allowed nasty killer bugs like MRE to adapt so effectively that they are often resistant to any antibiotic we can throw at it. There are consequences to vaccines and antibiotics. Some people want to study that, and some, it seems, want to call off the debate.
Instead of setting up this straw man of me not understanding germs or viruses, let's have a real debate about how much we should use vaccines and antibiotics. Of course it's good that we have them in our arsenal, but isn't the real skeptic the one who asks if these powerful but toxic methods do harm to what actually is a a very good defensive system, the one you were born with?
Also, I have never said there was a medical conspiracy. In fact,
when Howard Dean asked me that, my response was "I wouldn't call it a
conspiracy." Any more than there's a conspiracy for the Pentagon budget
to be obscenely bloated and operated largely for the corporate welfare
of defense contractors. If these are conspiracies, they're mostly legal
ones that happen in plain sight. (Good time here to plug the hostess'
book, Pigs At the Trough
,
it's all in there!) I have, in fact, used the phrase
"medical-pharmaceutical-food industry" complex in comparing it to
Eisenhower's famous depiction of a "military-industrial complex."
But no, I don't think the A.M.A. and Big Pharma and Aetna and Dr. Frist's hospital chain all meet in a board room and cackle about keeping us sick. They meet on the golf course. (Just kidding.)
Do pharmaceutical companies want to cure diabetes or do they want to sell diabetes drugs and equipment? Well, they sure do sell a lot these days, and the food companies are what make that possible. Read David Kessler's book about the deliberate way food companies use salt, fat and sugar as foodcrack to get people literally addicted to eating bad food and too much of it. Is that a conspiracy? Only if you define corporations putting profit ahead of human health as conspiracy. The fact that Americans will do anything to each other for money is not a conspiracy, it's a scandal.
I believe in science and I believe in studies to determine the truth. I also believe Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon was correct when he said recently on MSNBC: "If you've got a checkbook in this town, you can get just about any set of facts you want." So if I remind you of a conspiracy theorist, you sometimes remind me of Britney Spears when she said "we should just do whatever the president says to do, and not ask questions and just support him." The medical community can be brutal on dissent, which would hold more weight if I thought this was a terribly healthy country, which it isn't. Health care is one sixth of our economy, and we spend way more on it than any other nation. The elephant in the room of the health care debate is that we are going to have a high health care bill every year no matter what law they pass because we're sick -- we need a lot of drugs and services.
Am I a conspiracy theorist if I suggest that since the network's nightly news broadcasts are sponsored almost entirely by prescription drug ads, that you might have to hold your breath a long time before you hear the alternative point of view to using pharmaceuticals to cure all our ailments?
Is it conspiracy theory to believe that American medicine too much treats symptoms and not root causes of disease? I always ask my friends when they go to the doctor for something, "Did your doctor ask you what you eat?" The answer is almost always 'no,' and a lot can be cured with diet and a healthier lifestyle. (And a lot can't. I also understand the role of genetics and generations of artificial selection). But Americans don't want to hear that, so doctors don't push it. It's easier and more profitable to write a prescription for Lipitor. They're not bad people, and at the end of the day, you can't make someone eat right. I like and respect all the M.D.s I've had over the years, and for the record, I have a naturopath doctor and I have a Western doctor. I would make an analogy to Republicans and Democrats: in both politics and health, I don't commit to either party because I'm on the side of the truth, whoever has it. In both cases, I'm an Independent.
Ms. Fisher said "If we want to create a society that is dependent on shots for immunity -- the same way we are getting dependent on prescription drugs, antibiotics, and surgery -- this is the path we should keep going down."
I don't think its "anti-science" to pause and consider that point of view.
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71 Comments so far
Show AllSpeaking as a true scientist, consider this: the delivery of these vaccines is conducted by the same bottom (line) feeding medical industrial complex and its tea cum carpetbagger shills that are blocking effective, universal single-payer health CARE for US ALL! BTW, their chicken pox "vaccine" is perpetuating and compounding shingles (and your doctor/FDA/CDC won't admit that, either; unless it's too late, to an emergency room!).
Not for me, thanks, but no.
Buck...that's what I have said too....in the past. I happen to be a health care worker and this year our hospital MANDATED the H1N1 vaccine and the seasonal flu vaccine, telling all the staff that if we did not comply we would have to wear masks for our entire 8 hr. shifts. If we did not wear the masks for the entire shift, we would need to look for another job. I surely DO NOT LIKE BEING MANDATED TO TAKE THIS POISON!!!! Did you ever try to work in a face mask? I have asthma....imagine how breathing would be altered. Most of us went ahead and took it. A few hold outs are still waiting to see what the result of their refusal is.
Humorous (and fearless) truthtellers are very high on my list of admirable human beings. Never could afford HBO, but Maher is one reason to wish I had it. Maher is right about finding out more about vaccines (and everything). As Einstein put it: The important thing is not to stop questioning.
The mercury in vaccines is extremely small, much smaller than you get eating a can of tuna. Formaldehyde is naturally produced in quantities in your own body at far larger porportions than found in vaccines. In 1918, most people died of secondary infections in their lungs after contracting the flu. The flu weakened the immune system quickly allowing otherwise easily fended-off microbes to invade and thus kill their hosts. One could get the pneumococcol vaccine instead of the flu..but then we are back to a vaccine. The precautionary principle was applied to the H1N1 virus; no one knew what this novel flu virus could do so in a damned if you do and damned if you don't world, the science went with the damned if you do approach. If this virus mutates with, say, H5N1 (which is not human-to-human communicable) and makes it easily spread with a kill rate of 63%, what makes me stand up is the privately-owned Big Pharma couldn't now and maybe can't then, provide the health care needed to prevent mass death. Americans are sick but not as sick as those in the Third World Nations...and it isn't vaccines, antibiotics that are making them sicker...it's simply GREED...and ignorance..and laziness. As to naturapaths, they are not trained in scientific procedures. Science journals and departments are well aware of the money angle and unlike alternative medicines/procedures, are required to expose conflicts of interests after each article and to abide by laws governing the safety and effectiveness of their medicines and procedures. Additionally, alternative medicine is BIG business as well and some of them are created by Big Pharma simply because they no longer have to follow any rules regular science requires. Everything in the right quantities is poison. Even the insect repellents found naturally in a cabbage, for instance, can cause cancer in the right amounts. Natural does not equal safe, either. Essiac Tea, that old Indian cure-all has been found to stimulate breast cancer cell growth in vitro, yet people swallow that hoping to cure their breast cancer or keep it away. Good luck.
The US and Canada are especially science-illiterate. One has to do their research, no doubt, but they also have to keep tabs on who is doing the research and the standards used. Just because Big Pharma sponsored labs come up with something doesn't mean it's a lie or a fault either; however, when the white witch down the street is selling me love potion #9, I want at least to know she's a qualified chemist and has peer-reviewed papers backing her claims. Not a witches covenant, thank you.
Please post your stock portfolio so we may confirm your gegen die natur einstellung.[ your anti nature stance/position]
hey ghostbuster - you can have my dose of mercury - no need to thank me
down the hatch bro
Sioux Rose
GHOSTBUSTER: You sure make some unfounded claims about the holistic health community. I received an email yesterday (I will return to this site and offer its link so you can read it yourself) that laid quite bare the LIES around vaccines, and in the manner big tobacco hid the statistics of how it beefed up its product to enhance the trend towards addiction, in this case the makers of vaccines HID the evidence that linked the not exactly trace amounts of Mercury to the incredibly high and still-increasing rates of autism. What gets published is what favors big pharma and its greed for profit, rather than meaningful debate. That point was well-articulated in this article.
Another significant insight Maher related was: given healthy diets, as opposed to the ubiquitous crap most Americans take in thanks to advertising's marriage to the fast food industry, many ailments would heal by themselves. The body is wired to form its own defense against a great many things. Now today's biogenetically created viruses and their bacterial cousins (the detritus of so many toxic chemicals thrown carelessly into all sorts of ecosystems) create a different monster altogether. I see this as the medical version of "Disaster Capitalism." As many of us find ourselves exposed to these laboratory Frankenstein chemical polymers, we will have to PAY the makers of their antidotes if we intend to live. However, the body normally builds up defenses from natural exposures. The argument in the holistic realm is that childhood illnesses exist in part to provide that impetus, i.e. they catalyze the child's biology to build up its own defenses. By anesthetizing this mechanism, it's argued, worse diseases occur. The holistic field views in these illnesses a mechanism not unlike that seen in the weather where periodic storms cleanse the atmosphere.
And by the way, Ephraim, I would imagine you'd notice this, too... in the Maher article the word its was used instead of it's more than 10 times. Does anyone edit Huffington post?
"Formaldehyde is naturally produced in quantities in your own body at far larger porportions than found in vaccines."
YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR MIND!
I'm old enough to have known someone with Polio, (my aunt). Because of the disease she spent most of her life using braces, and a wheel chair to get around. Also one of her arms was severely disabled due to the disease. I would not wish her disabilities on my worse enemy.
So I know first hand how important vaccines are. I'm not saying they shouldn't be scrutinized, but when it comes to using them you don't want to "Throw the baby out with the bath water".
Yep. Polio was awful and we all rejoiced when a vaccine was found. I am sorry it came too late for your aunt.
Note that despite the legitimate panic over polio, there were extensive controlled trials before any vaccine was deployed for the general public. It was proven to work far more than not, proven safe far more than not.
That is no longer the case for vaccines or medications. They are rushed to market with all their flaws like a Microsoft product. The ads on TV and the list of dangers are a joke. "Tell your doctor if...". Why did your doctor go to medical school if he or she needs you to repeat advice from writers of a TV ad?
Joe
I too am sorry about your Aunt's illness. The polio vaccine though was first a live virus and accounted that some people taking it contracted the disease. I remember taking the sugar cubes in school, everyone took them. I think it was the Sabin vaccine that replaced the live virus with a partially killed virus. Today, the disease is mostly erradicated in that most of the cases are caused by the vaccine. It has to do with low rates of infection that make complete erradication so difficult.
Big Pork and Swine Flu
Now that bird flu has successfully joined forces with swine flu, it can no longer be said that pigs can't fly.;~) And I'd like to think that Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, had Miss Piggy dressed wearing a string of pearls as his way of slamming the Biblical phrase "don't cast pearls before swine."
Seriously though, the CDC has traced the swine flu back to a mega-hog farm in North Carolina:
http://www.humanesociety.org/news/news/2009/04/swine_flu_virus_origin_1998_042909.html
So I'm puzzled as to why the public is showing no signs of wanting to blame Big Pork for causing this outbreak of the swine flu. Deregulation and lack of oversight play a role in this. But no one should overlook the fact that because hog farmers are maximizing profits by doing irresponsible things like not keeping their pigs vaccinated and not providing them with enough space and ventilation, hog farms have turned into a breeding ground for all sorts of deadly viruses, especially the ones that are capable of crossing over into the human population.
http://www.nhpr.org/node/24505
So I find it disturbing that the public remains silent about the hog industry costing hundreds of American lives and billions in tax dollars. But it's probably the case that the public mistakenly thinks the swine flu, like the Great Recession, is like the weather, in that it's purely a product of nature with man having zero control over it. So don't be too surprised that the Smithfields of the World, just like the Goldmans of the World, will get off the hook for causing widespread damage throughout the US and the world.
And I must say that it's pretty obvious that Obama wanted to rename the swine flu to H1N1 virus not because he cares deeply about the health and safety of pigs, but because he's deep in the pockets of Big Pork.
cynthia: one of the ten rules of networking and as we have seen from your post:
7. given the proper propulsion - pigs fly just fine
Sioux Rose
CYNTHIA: You write quite well. Excellent post.
One thing most people fail to recognize is that the largest Pandemics in mankinds history have been caused by viruses that jumped the species barrier from animal to man.
In general this began occurring when man first domesticated Animals and then started to live in close proximity to them. As example in Medieval Europe many people slept in the same buildings animals were kept.
These various plagues killed tens of millions of peoples which in time led to the people being exposed to the same being more "resistant" to the various diseases.
When these same European settlers came to the Americas they were a petri dish of viruses and diseases which spread amongst the Native Americans who had no great history of the domestication of animals and thus were less resistant.
What modern Industrial scale agriculture does is exponentially increase the chances of animals becoming carriers for various diseases and exponentially increase the chances of one of these viruses mutating and then jumping the species barrier. Feedlots are a petri dish for new disease.
That all said we should not discount the very high possibility that many of these Viruses are by DESIGN and made in research labs. The prescence of feedlots and industrial scale agriculture then becomes the perfect cover for releasing these into the human population.
The plague in the Ukraine has all the makings of a human designed plague and Scientists in the past have spoke of the NEED TO manufacture such viruses in order to check the population growth of Humans.
Now when you got Cabals of very wealthy Individuals having meetings where they speak of the need to curtail the growth of populations (Documented many times) and when you have Scientists speaking of designing viruses for that very purpose, it not untoward to suggest a collusion between the two groups.
When you consider the DOCUMENTED cases of many dozens of high profile micro-biologists being killed in Car accidents or committing Suicide (just do a google search on Micro-biologist commits suicide) then people should be VERY suspicous of what they are told.
Added to that is WHO openly admitting that Baxter Pharmaceuticals released a Vaccine that was contaminated with the Bird Flu Virus which would have killed any people it was administered to and was only caught because of an alert scientist in a Czech lab and it very much becomes a "who can you trust"?
It a very scary world out there made all the scarier by the fact that the system called Capitalism brings with it a hierachy of power that allows the psychopath to rise to positions of power . These people are not going to let "conscience" get in their way because by definition they have none.
Sioux Rose
GW NORTH: I remember coming across a chilling article published in Rolling Stone about this very thing (the virus crossing from one species to another and becoming more virulent). The article spoke of the fact that the original Salk vaccine required lots of Rhesus monkeys, their livers I believe it was, in which to grow the vaccine. After thousands were taken from India, there was some resistance on the part of those who had ecological leanings. Thus a different monkey species from Africa was used and that led to the problems. Years later I attended a session in Key West conducted by a trance medium and the small group participating in this event was allowed to ask questions. I asked if AIDS was a naturally occuring phenomenon or caused by "science." The answer was, "some of both." Whenever shortsighted human beings, possessed of their 5-10 years of proud academic study, set forth to dismantle what Mother Nature in her LOVE and WISDOM took so many millennia to design, problems ALWAYS result. There are so many examples in the form of ecological communities tampered with, some essential staple taken out or added, and the entire thing collapsing or running amok.
The playing fast and loose with biogenetic engineering is the proverbial Pandora's Box that no one will ever be able to close again. I can almost picture, shades of a sci-fi film, the types of gross abnormalities that will be the genetic NORMS to future generations. Between exposures to DU and all the chemicals, added to the genetic Frankenfoods being readily ingested, it's a corrupted cocktail, one that will require generations to biologically unravel.
Ok bill let me break it down for you
'
h1n1 is a man made virus - made by baxter labs in switzerland (they were the ones repsonsible for the outbreak in poland a few months ago by sending poisoned vaccines - they said by mistake)
they have been given legal immunity for the virus and related problems that may arise - perhaps because it has not been tested and it has not been proven effective
here is the finnish minsster of health discussing the virus - a combo of human virus, bird flu and swine flu topped off with cat cancer, cadmium and mercury
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTgyakGAddM>
she says it is part of the nwo/rockefeller plan to reduce the world's population by 5 billion
its worth the effort to watch this one folks
also, not being reported this week is an outbreak of pneumonic plague - a variation of bubonic plague - it is racing through the ukraine - the country is under martial law and whole cities are shut down
funny how we don't hear about it in the corporate news aint it
this plague has now moved into belarus and is in india
can you say nwo....
for all those "conspiracy hating" sheeple - sit back and watch the nwo endgame
its happening right before our eyes...
buff, I would say you are paranoid about the Rockefeller plan except that my son worked in the Rockefeller Institute during high school around 1986 or 1987. His job was to isolate and purify DNA, which was a new technology then. He was fascinated by the job until he read something about the ultimate intent of the research. It was to develop a way to change the genetic makeup of a population so that if heavy metals were introduced into the environment, that population would become sterile.
My son came home literally pale and shocked by this ubermenschen eugenics goal and quit the internship.
The theory of fractals would suggest that this little incident reflects a much larger picture.
Joe
"my son worked in the Rockefeller Institute during high school around 1986 or 1987. His job was to isolate and purify DNA, which was a new technology then. He was fascinated by the job until he read something about the ultimate intent of the research. It was to develop a way to change the genetic makeup of a population so that if heavy metals were introduced into the environment, that population would become sterile." -- jclientelle
Very frightening! We should never stop asking questions, which is Mr. Maher's point, isn't it?
Your son was a hero. Unfortunately, they always find someone ready to do the dirty work as a backup just in case they run into heroes. The Rockefellar plan you described sounds similar to nanotechnology. There's some good and then some evil to it.
My son's resignation did not hurt the project, unfortunately. There were ambitious kids lined up to replace him, to put "Internship at Rockefeller Institute" on their college applications. But I am very proud of his integrity, then and now.
Joe
The same medical establishment that wants us to believe birth necessitates intervention wants us to treat conditions BEFORE we develop them. The next wave of pharma ads will say "Think you *could* become impotent? Take EjacuLater!" Give the people what they want - eternal health, eternal life.
What's so amusing is how those of us questioning the status quo are varying lumped in with the tin-foil hat brigade, flat-earthers and the religious right when the absolute truth is, we just want a better system. Want to make us appreciate science-based medicine? Remove the profit motivation across the board and get back to that 'first, do no harm' thingy. Allow full insurance coverage for those radical alternative practitioners such as midwives and naturopaths. Make separate component vaccines more widely available (and more acceptable). And lastly, don't ask us to deliver up our children as if they're no more unusual than a petri dish in a lab somewhere - they're all different and more complex than studies have sought to find.
Left unsaid, the H1N1 virus and other swine flu viruses originate in factory-farmed pigs.
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-25-swine-flu-smithfield/
I agreed up to the point where Bill says there are better people than celebrities to talk about this sort of thing.
I jumped back on to the band wagon where he talks about the continuation of questioning and that a method of medical delivery may not always work in every situation.
That's not what science says. Business and industry may say that, especially when it comes to an industrial model where automation is often confused with modernisation. That's not science either. A couple of things stand out here:
A) There is no silencing going on of opponents to vaccinations. False argument. I'm getting earfuls of it. It's all over the place.
B) When it comes to laypeople entering the fray on both sides I'm not hearing about a lot of evidence backed up by scientific methods. We're talking about biology and pharmacology here, both scientific disciplines. We hear people talk about the horrible ingredients in vaccines and what they can potentially do, but we don't hear them talking about the context in which these horrible things can take place. At what amounts, in what part of the body under what circumstances and with what mode of delivery? Potentially dangerous substances exist in all sorts of things we consume.
Finally, I do agree with Maher on disclosure. People should always be made aware about what's in something that's about to go into their body, but they should be informed in a realistic, educated setting. I would want to know about trace levels of mercury and Formaldehyde, but I'd want to know what chances of danger they really pose. As I'm a lay person, I'd like to know where else similar amounts of these things exist so I can make a realistic comparison. Big Pharma is hampered by a legal, marketing and legal industry that has no interest in wellbeing. These should always be suspected On the other hand, there are fear-mongers on the other side with all sorts of wild-eyed speculation that have had no basis proven evidence.
It is true that there have been very few rigorous studies that prove that vaccines actually work. The flu vaccine literature says it is not approved for pregnant women, yet pregnant women are being urged to get the vaccine. There are also reports coming in of miscarriage after flu vaccination (both seasonal and H1N1). What are we to believe? If the flu vaccine can cause miscarriage, what can it do to a 6-month old infant? What many are saying is, prove it, do some proper studies and give me scientific proof.
What is the matter, can't you read? Do you need to be spoon-fed? Know who your sources are and go read about vaccines. Why is Europe so much farther ahead of us? Maybe you were not taught science in school, and no critical thinking. Crap! People like you make me so mad.
You can no longer trust the recommendations.
We are supposed to believe simply: Vaccine Good.
Don't ask questions.
There are definitely some indications for vaccines. Unfortunately the recommendations are based not on what is the safest delivery, but on what is the most delivery.
Most egregious is the schedule for infants. It would make much more sense to spread the vaccines out over a period of weeks, rather than give a barrage at once, overwhelming the immune system. Does a newborn baby need the Hepatitis B vaccine? Eventually, yes, but on the birth day, NO!
But that is when you can catch the most babies, so that is when it is recommended.
Is it remotely possible that something political is going on with Bush's pandemic? Could all the fear about the flu be a guise for power and profit? Would Bush and Cheney have been so dastardly as to work with the WHO (the pharmaceutical industry and the Rockefellers) to plan something unpleasant? No way.
“We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the new world order.” - David Rockefeller
“Today America would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by the World Government.”
- Henry Kissinger, 1991 Bilderberg Conference.
From the WHO 2005 declaration: (excerpted) “Under special pandemic plans enacted around the world including the USA, in 2005 [under Bush and Cheney], national governments are to be dissolved in the event of a pandemic emergency and replaced by special crisis committees, which take charge of the health and security infrastructure of a country, and which are answerable to the WHO and EU in Europe and to the WHO and UN in North America.
According to http://www.theflucase.com the WHO was running "plague" exercises a month before this supposed plague "broke out" in the Ukraine, a place that was coincidentally rejecting the current president, the vaccines and NATO. Here, Gen. Renuart of USNorthCom predicted a pandemic emerging out of Mexico just weeks before it "broke out" there. The WHO and the military are psychic. What other explanation could there be? http://www.examiner.com/x-10438-Peace-Studies-Examiner~y2009m9d9-Ca-conference-experts-to-expose-H1N1-truth-live-on-net-Saturday
"A Tale of Two Stories: The European BioWar outbreak and the censoring of it by the mainstream news media."
The biggest story on the Planet today is the outbreak of a very serious Advanced Biological War virus in Europe. The second biggest story on the Planet is the suppression of this story for almost two weeks by the corporate owned mainstream news media.
http://europebusines.blogspot. com/
(As to the science behind the vaccines, the CDC will not allow them to be independently tested or even looked at to see what is in them though they come from Baxter with medical war crimes records of intentionally killing with vaccines and of releasing to 18 countries live bird flu - a bioweapon sent by the WHO - mixed with human flu into a vaccine just last year that would have killed millions. 60% kill rate. It was labeled as "seasonal flu". Oops. A single lab tech stopped the vaccines at the last second. He ran his own test and injected a sample into ferrets which all immediately died. Baxter was then immediately chose to make the swine flu. Makes sense.
Oh, and it gets so much better with regards to vaccines and profits (from http://www.naturalnews.com/026779_swine_flu_patents_vaccines.html):
Aside from the dangerous ingredients many people already know about (like squalene or thimerosal), one of the key ingredients used in flu vaccines (including the vaccines being prepared for the swine flu pandemic) is the diseased flesh of African Green Monkeys. This is revealed in U.S. patent No. 5911998 - Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line. (http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5...)
As this patent readily explains, ingredients used in the vaccine are derived from the kidneys of African Green Monkeys who are first infected with the virus, then allowed to fester the disease, and then are killed so that their diseased organs can be used make vaccine ingredients. This is done in a cruel, inhumane "flesh factory" environment where the monkeys are subjected to a process that includes "incubating said inoculated cell line to permit proliferation of said virus." Then: "harvesting the virus resulting from step (c); and... (ii) preparing a vaccine from the harvested virus."
Aside from the outrageous cruelty taking place with all this ("incubating" the virus in the kidneys of living monkeys, for example), there's another disturbing fact that has surfaced in all this: The patent for this process is held not just by the National Institutes of Health, but by another private corporation known as DynCorp.
What you probably didn't want to know about Dyncorp
DynCorp, it turns out, is a one of the top private military contractors working for the U.S. government. In addition to allegedly trafficking in under-age sex slaves in Bosnia (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.ph...) and poisoning rural farmers in Ecuador with its aerial spraying of Colombian coca crops (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.ph...), Dyncorp just happens to be paid big dollars by the U.S. government to patrol the U.S. / Mexico border, near where the H1N1 first swine flu virus was originally detected.
DynCorp also happens to be in a position to receive tremendous financial rewards from its patents covering attenuated live viral vaccine harvesting methods, as described in four key patents jointly held by DynCorp and the National Institutes of Health:
(6025182) Method for producing a virus from an African green monkey kidney cell line
(6117667) Method for producing an adapted virus population from an African green monkey kidney cell line (http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6...)
(5911998) Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line
(5646033) African green monkey kidney cell lines useful for maintaining viruses and for preparation of viral vaccines
Government collusion?
One of the key inventors in these patents now held by DynCorp was Dr. Robert H. Purcell. Who is Dr. Robert Purcell? He's one of the co-chiefs of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases operating under the National Institutes of Health of the U.S. government. (http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/labs/abou...)
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and the net is rife with misinterpretations and paranoia.
Some here know the real story when comments were made about whether vaccine prepared in chicken eggs was preferable to that produced in the immortalised line of African Green monkey kidney cells (the source for the polio vaccine).
wow aliensoup,
It looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking....
Thanks for the very informative post. Howard Hughes was right after all. Switch to Rubber Gloves and intercoms...... And no matter how long it takes to get out of the bathroom, never touch the doorknob....
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Sioux Rose
TJ: Thanks for the laugh. As for "I picked the wrong week to quit drinking," it has all the makings of a country music song hit! The next lyrics would require a hybrid of something along the line of, "I get my check and pass it on down the line. The more money that I'm makin, the less I can call mine, I'm addicted to a number... that ain't worth a dime." Sometimes those country boys (and girls) lay an allegorical knife right into the heart of the beast. And if it's humorous, all the more likelihood the lyrics will get through!
Hey there you are SR!
Glad you made it back. Actually it's a line from Loyd Bridges the Air Traffic Controller in the comedy "Airplane!" When he finds out that the only one who can land the plane is a washed-out drunk named Ted Striker he then says:
"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking/taking amphetamines/sniffing glue" as it gets worse and worse.
check out the page at www.planetliberty.wikidot.com. Is it getting any better?
Anybody who wants to, who is a trusted progressive of ours can add a page about anything and it will not be censored. Then instead of having to repeat your positions over and over again you can just list the unique address of your page. My pages may be modified by any of you. These wikipages (like a card box file) are pretty easy to modify once you get logged on. Getting logged on takes a little doing.
Cheers,
TJ
While I'm not getting the vaccine, its rather scary that Washington--after all the fear mongering-- can't deliver it to its citizens. What if it was really something that was needed?
Good post, Bill. And not one sucking-up to Obama, either!
(What is this "Huffington Post" you speak of?)
Here are some facts that can be googled and/or looked up at WHO or CDC and many places if people care to check:
Odds of …
death by assault in your lifetime : 331/1
death by falling : 250/1
death by firearm : 325/1
death by poison : 1,400/1
death in a car crash : 5,000/1
death by choking on food or something else : 5,000/1
death by drowning : 9,000/1
death by murder : 20,000/1
death by lightning : 71,000/1
death by dog attack : 137,000/1
death in the bathtub : 807,000/1
death by falling out of bed : 2,000,000/1
being killed in a terrorist WMD attack : 6,000,000/1
1154 people died (worldwide) from swine flu so far
Odds 8,000,000/1
Regular run of the mill strains of influenza kill more than 35,000 Americans every year.
Bird flu - WHO reports as of June 1, 2009, 436 cases and 262 deaths. (supposed to kill millions)
More than 25million people have died from AIDS since 1981
1.6 million died from TB in 2005
SARS (Severe Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome) 167 deaths (supposed to kill millions)
Major beneficiaries for most of these supposed epidemics/pandemics:
Drug companies - more medications/vaccines sold
Media - more interest equals more sales
Some politicians
Only treatment for swine flu - Tamiflu (also only treatment for bird flu) Relenza less effective, though cheaper
Only license for Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) is to: Gilead Sciences Inc.
(Roche manufactures it under license) Patent protection until 2016
USA ordered 25 million doses at total cost of $80 per course
Chairman of Gilead from 1997 to 2001 and held major stocks: Donald Rumsfeld
Bush authorized $1.7 billion to fight bird flu - 14% went to Gilead
Gilead shares rose 700% since 2005 (when stock markets fell 40%)
Total revenue for 2nd quarter 09 up 29%% over 2008
Net income for 2nd quarter 09 = $571.4 milliion ($434 million in 2008)
Royalties from Roche = $78.8 million
10% of every vaccine to Rumsfeld
So:
Every month 50,000 people die from AIDS in South Africa
Every day nearly 1,600 people die from AIDS
Every year 18,000 people die on our highways
Every year 25,000 people are murdered
Every year 80,000 worldwide die of TB
Every year 15 million children die of starvation/malnutrition worldwide - 37,000 in the USA just last year
But we focus on Swine Flu/Bird Flu because there's not enough money to be made from treating AIDS, TB, and malnutrition by the powers that be.
Some strange priorities people have.
Thanks for the perspective, aliensoup.
Giving children food and clean water will not make fast money for anyone.
Besides those children are usually the brats of the poor. We are only interested in diseases that can affect the rich and the white. Those are the important people, and they can afford to pay good money for drugs and surgery.
Therefore the continual and massive deaths of the poor and their children are not hailed as a national or worldwide pandemic.
Joe
Terrific list.
The whole "pandemic" as a legal, bureaucratic, financial, military structure, was set up under Bush and Cheney. Senior Bush was a CEO of a drug company. Legal and scientific experts in Canada exposed the pandemic as artificially created by the military and pharmaceutical industry that run the WHO and as a military agenda. Bush came up with two giant and hugely profitable, rights-destroying things - the war on terror and the pandemic. Both appear engineered.
Here is Chopra on the biology of Pandemics.
"The bird and mammalian species took hold on the earth approximately 65 million years ago, i.e. the same time as the dinosaurs went extinct. So did the flu and other viruses of all the surviving species. Since then, all those viruses have been mating and mutating among themselves without the sky caving in due to any infection. Therefore, any talk of a bird or swine flu pandemic with the probability to kill millions of people is either a purposeful or hallucinogenic nonsense to make profit on the backs of the innocent following."
Reminds me of a Leonard Cohen song.
Joe
Here's Robert Kennedy's take.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQG5Q4GWw2o
Thank you Bill Maher for risking ridicule by raising real questions about the rush to vaccinate for swine flu. I appreciate your intellectual honesty.
Joe
Good for Maher.
And here is Shiv Chopra asking for the same conversation that Maher is. Chopra is the food and drug safety expert (and microbiologist with a specialty in vaccines) who whistle blew and stood up to Monsanto and Eli Lily and kept rBGH out of Canada (and Europe, which relied on his work).
VACCINES: Prevention or Curse?
Anyone knowing the basics of biology should know:
1. That all vaccines by their very nature are antigens and that every antigen by defintion must be a foreign protein or a substance attached to one's own or some other foreign protein;
2. That no foreign protein can be absorbed into the blood stream unless it is digested in the alimentary canal into its basic amino acids;
3. That it is these amino acids which after being absorbed into the blood stream are reconstituted into one's own proteins and it is these proteins which distinguishes every being of existence into self and non-self.
4. That any interference or tampering with these laws of existence can bring calamity to the being in which it occurs such as by causing auto-immune conditions like autism, etc.
This is precisely what may be occurring due to vaccine injections in people. Surprisingly, I am presently the only scientist who is reminding about this phenomenon of existence. If I am wrong I would like to be corrected by those claiming to possess better knowledge of same.
The foreign proteins in vaccines originate from not only the infectious organisms against which one wishes to produce infection-fighting antibodies but also the artificial media in which these organisms are grown. Contained in such media may include one or more of the following materials: bovine serum, horse serum, chicken egg, monkey kidney, insect cells and even human fetal cells.
Apart from the foreign proteins, vaccines may also contain other harmful substances, including mercury, aluminum, formalin, oily adjuvants, etc., plus untold number of stray viruses with the potential to cause cancer, HIV, serum-hepatitis, and so on.
Meanwhile, evidence indicates that except for smallpox, no other infectious disease, e.g.: tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, anthrax, measles, mumps, rubella, DPT, polio, influenza and others,has been eradicated and that this continues to be so despite the decades of vaccinations against each of these diseases. Also, during the same period, the incidence of many previously uncommon diseases, such as autism, diabetes, allergies, andcancer, has been increasing in pandemic proportions.
I feel that it is time to demand a moratorium on, at least, the compulsory vaccinations for children, health care professionals and military personnel until such time that these issues are reviewed and discussed in an open and transparent manner with the due involvement of the public.
Shiv Chopra, Author,
CORRUPT TO THE CORE: Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower
www.shivchopra.com
Vaccines largely worked for polio and smallpox, which are diseases you really do not want to get. In those cases I do not think there is much of a question about cost / benefit. Most kids got over measles, mumps, rubella, scarletina and other childhood diseases, but not all. Perhaps it needs more study, but I can see some benefits from preventing these diseases, especially rubella which can cause birth defects.
I think there are many questions about flu vaccines. Most influenza deaths occurred in bad conditions, overcrowded conditions in which there was no heat or hot water and where people rarely had access to good food and vitamin C. I could be wrong, but I think that a person resting in a heated home with clean tap water and adequate fluids and vitamins is very likely to recover. In fact, many people get the flu, fight it off and develop an immunity without even realizing they were sick.
In any case, there are at least two factors clouding a fair evaluation of flu vaccines:
1. The power of the pharma industry and the profit motive.
2. The habit of using simplistic fear based approaches rather than longer term rational planning in every sphere, including health.
Since pharma funds much of the research, either directly or via grants to universities, who would engage in a quality study of this question?? It is a pervasive problem in the fields of health and medicine.
Joe
So if the W.H.O., and our government, express only apathy toward the current flu pandemic instead of sounding the alarm and promoting the vaccine, none of us will hold the government accountable or criticize the government for doing nothing? Is that the way we want it?
It would be better if they addressed HEALTH. Why aren't they doing something about the millions and millions of child deaths and improper development caused by poverty? Because there is nothing in it for them. On the contrary, privatization of water and use of toxic chemicals in food continues apace.
A good immune system is probably the best protection against a flu.
Joe
The W.H.O. pushes flu shots not food for people. Hey! It IS profits before people.
Remember RUMSFELD has major holdings in drugs companies.
He has a major holding in a company that produces an antiviral. His holdings would be very adversely affected if vaccination were almost 100%.
Maher makes a good point that we should question the benefits and costs of vaccines. But the only way of doing this is by carrying out the appropriate scientific research. Science is the only analytic tool we have that can answer the complex questions that need to be answered (e.g., how dangerous is this particular flu?, what does it mean to have a "compromised immune system", how dangerous is the vaccine?).
I'm sorry if feelings are hurt, but all the ideology, speculation, and paranoia I see in these comments does much more harm than good.
Please report to the Ministry of Love for your mercury, formaldehyde, and squalene injections, sheep. Do your part for the corporate slave grid.